Research in our group is focused primarily upon the development of new strategies and methodologies for the synthesis of natural products. Of particular interest are the discovery of practical new processes which utilize the redox chemistry of visible light activated metal complexes. Visible light sensitization is an attractive means to initiate organic reactions due to the lack of visible light absorbance by organic compounds thereby reducing the side reactions that are often associated with photochemical reactions conducted with high energy UV light. These photocatalysts offer a means to selectively functionalize organic molecules with the appropriate choice of an excited state quencher. These processes offer improved chemoselectivity (and strategic advantages when employed in total synthesis) over current approaches while also enabling the reduction of stoichiometric waste byproducts.
We are grateful to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01-GM096129, P41-GM094112, P50-GM067041), the National Science Foundation (CHE-1056568), the ACS Petroleum Research Fund, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Amgen, Boehringer-Ingelheim, and Novartis for their generous support of our research program. Fellowship support to graduate students from Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Joseph Tucker), the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (Laura Furst), AstraZeneca (Chunhui Dai and John Nguyen), Amgen and the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry (Joespeh Tucker) and postdoctoral fellows from the Swiss National Science Foundation (Dr. Jagan Narayanam) and the Swedish Research Council (Dr. Carl-John Wallentin) is gratefully acknowledged.